The Religion of the Ancient Celts

Page: 37

Smiths have everywhere been regarded as uncanny—a tradition
surviving from the first introduction of metal among those hitherto
accustomed to stone weapons and tools. S. Patrick prayed against
the "spells of women, smiths, and Druids," and it is thus not
surprising to find that Goibniu had a reputation for magic, even
among Christians. A spell for making butter, in an eighth century
MS. preserved at S. Gall, appeals to his "science."259 Curiously enough, Goibniu is also
connected with the culinary art in myth, and, like Hephaistos,
prepares the feast of the gods, while his ale preserves their
immortality. The
elation produced by heady liquors caused them to be regarded as
draughts of immortality, like Soma, Haoma, or nectar. Goibniu
survives in tradition as the Gobhan Saer, to whom the
building of round towers is ascribed.

Another god of crafts was Creidne the brazier (Ir. cerd,
"artificer"; cf. Scots caird, "tinker"), who assisted in
making a silver hand for Nuada, and supplied with magical rapidity
parts of the weapons used at Mag-tured.
According to the annalists, he was drowned while bringing golden
ore from Spain.
Luchtine, god of carpenters, provided spear-handles {77} for the
battle, and with marvellous skill flung them into the sockets of
the spear-heads.

Diancecht, whose name may mean "swift in power," was god of
medicine, and, with Creidne's help, fashioned a silver hand for
Nuada.264 His son Miach replaced this by a
magic restoration of the real hand, and in jealousy his father slew
him—a version of the Märchen formula of the
jealous master. Three hundred and sixty-five herbs grew from his
grave, and were arranged according to their properties by his
sister Airmed, but Diancecht again confused them, "so that no one
knows their proper cures." At
the second battle of Mag-tured, Diancecht presided over a
healing-well containing magic herbs. These and the power of spells
caused the mortally wounded who were placed in it to recover. Hence
it was called "the spring of health."
Diancecht, associated with a healing-well, may be cognate with
Grannos. He is also referred to in the S. Gall MS., where his
healing powers are extolled.

An early chief of the gods is Dagda, who, in the story of the
battle of Mag-tured, is said to be so called because he promised to
do more than all the other gods together. Hence they said, "It is
thou art the good hand" (dag-dae). The Cóir
Anmann explains Dagda as "fire of god" (daig and
déa). The true derivation is from dagos,
"good," and deivos, "god," though Dr. Stokes considers
Dagda as connected with dagh, whence daghda,
"cunning."267 Dagda is also called Cera, a word
perhaps derived from kar and connected with Lat.
cerus, "creator" and other names of his are
Ruad-rofhessa, "lord of great knowledge," {78} and
Eochaid Ollathair, "great father," "for a great father to
the Tuatha Dé Danann was he." He
is also called "a beautiful god," and "the principal god of the
pagans."269 After the battle he divides the
brugs or síd among the gods, but his son
Oengus, having been omitted, by a stratagem succeeded in ousting
his father from his síd, over which he now himself
reigned270—possibly the survival of an
old myth telling of a superseding of Dagda's cult by that of
Oengus, a common enough occurrence in all religions. In another
version, Dagda being dead, Bodb Dearg divides the
síd, and Manannan makes the Tuatha Déa
invisible and immortal. He also helps Oengus to drive out his
foster-father Elemar from his brug, where Oengus now lives
as a god.271 The underground brugs are
the gods' land, in all respects resembling the oversea Elysium, and
at once burial-places of the euhemerised gods and local forms of
the divine land. Professor Rh[^y]s regards Dagda as an atmospheric
god; Dr. MacBain sees in him a sky-god. More probably he is an
early Earth-god and a god of agriculture. He has power over corn
and milk, and agrees to prevent the other gods from destroying
these after their defeat by the Milesians—former beneficent
gods being regarded as hurtful, a not uncommon result of the
triumph of a new faith.
Dagda is called "the god of the earth" "because of the greatness of
his power."
Mythical objects associated with him suggest plenty and
fertility—his cauldron which satisfied all comers, his
unfailing swine, one always living, the other ready for cooking, a
vessel {79} of ale, and three trees always laden with
fruit. These were in his síd, where none ever tasted
death;274 hence his síd was a
local Elysium, not a gloomy land of death, but the underworld in
its primitive aspect as the place of gods of fertility. In some
myths he appears with a huge club or fork, and M. D'Arbois suggests
that he may thus be an equivalent of the Gaulish god with the
mallet.275 This is probable, since the
Gaulish god may have been a form of Dispater, an Earth or
under-Earth god of fertility.

If Dagda was a god of fertility, he may have been an equivalent
of a god whose image was called Cenn or Cromm
Cruaich, "Head or Crooked One of the Mound," or "Bloody
Head or Crescent."
Vallancey, citing a text now lost, says that Crom-eocha was
a name of Dagda, and that a motto at the sacrificial place at Tara
read, "Let the altar ever blaze to Dagda."
These statements may support this identification. The cult of Cromm
is preserved in some verses:

Elsewhere we learn that this sacrifice in return for the gifts
of corn and milk from the god took place at Samhain, and that on
one occasion the violent prostrations of the worshippers caused
three-fourths of them to die. Again, "they beat their palms, they
pounded their bodies ... they shed falling showers of tears."279 These are reminiscences of
orgiastic rites in which pain and pleasure melt into one. The god
must have been a god of fertility; the blood of the victims was
poured on the image, the flesh, as in analogous savage rites and
folk-survivals, may have been buried in the fields to promote
fertility. If so, the victims' flesh was instinct with the power of
the divinity, and, though their number is obviously exaggerated,
several victims may have taken the place of an earlier slain
representative of the god. A mythic Crom Dubh, "Black Crom,"
whose festival occurs on the first Sunday in August, may be another
form of Cromm Cruaich. In one story the name is transferred to S.
Patrick's servant, who is asked by the fairies when they will go to
Paradise. "Not till the day of judgment," is the answer, and for
this they cease to help men in the processes of agriculture. But in
a variant Manannan bids Crom ask this question, and the same result
follows.280 These tales thus enshrine the
idea that Crom and the fairies were ancient gods of growth who
ceased to help men when they deserted them for the Christian faith.
If the sacrifice was offered at the August festival, or, as the
texts suggest, at Samhain, after harvest, it must have been on
account of the next year's crop, and the flesh may have been
mingled with the seed corn.

Dagda may thus have been a god of growth and fertility.
{81}
His wife or mistress was the river-goddess, Boand (the
Boyne),281 and the children ascribed to him
were Oengus, Bodb Dearg, Danu, Brigit, and perhaps Ogma. The
euhemerists made him die of Cethlenn's venom, long after the battle
of Mag-tured in which he encountered her.
Irish mythology is remarkably free from obscene and grotesque
myths, but some of these cluster round Dagda. We hear of the
Gargantuan meal provided for him in sport by the Fomorians, and of
which he ate so much that "not easy was it for him to move and
unseemly was his apparel," as well as his conduct with a Fomorian
beauty. Another amour of his was with Morrigan, the place where it
occurred being still known as "The Couple's Bed."283 In another tale Dagda acts as
cook to Conaire the great.